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My commute was blissfully perfect today. Left the house at 6:47, encountered very little traffic and arrived at the train station at 7:11 (I’ve started tracking routes and times with the vague thought of calculating variances and means…). The train pulled away at 7:20 and into Back bay around 8:11. Got to Boston Datacenters before 8:30, making it a truly amazing sub-2 hour trip, door to door.

Plus, I got some solid sleep on the train.

I fell asleep shortly after being joined in my two seat bench. There was sort of an odd moment when I woke up as we were pulling into Back Bay. Usually on the train (and particularly on the T) everyone puts on their harsh commuter face to repel casual conversation. My seatmate and I both woke up at the same time. Before either of us could re-assume the icy stare, we shared a chuckle at the learned ability to wake up for a particular stop. It was a moment of unexpected human intimacy on an otherwise grey morning.

The plumbers are back, and they are drilling into my basement walls again. Drill drill drill. It makes the house shake. They’re mounting pipe along the walls. Looks like we’re going to be able to make the drainage work without a pump. Amazing what you learn when you actually measure.

The plumbers have been passing pipe and tools in and out of the casement windows in the basement. The neighborhood cats have been wandering over to peek in my basement windows and investigate the strange noises. This, of course, is making my indoor cats positively insane. They’re twitching and rocking.

In other news, work is hectic. Not to whine about that.

Thus it begins: Kuwait’s biggest field starts to run out of oil.

Doctors have a saying: “The bleeding always stops.”

Engineers have a similar saying: “Unsustainable trends eventually end.”

So, hey, guess what: Fill up your car tonight, prices are gonna spike tomorrow.

I’m looking at charities. I’m looking for advice on the most productive ways to put a few dollars to good use. Assume for the moment that I can’t be troubled to get off my fat ass and go build a house or something. What charities seem to be doing the most actual, on-the-ground good for humanity these days? Of course, I would like to add to that list the non profits that I make the most use of…and perhaps also some simply tax exempt groups working for a better tomorrow.

http://charitywatch.org seems to be the http://www.consumerreports.org/main/home.jsp of this domain. Another one is http://www.charitynavigator.org. Hrm. So many details. Maybe I should reconsider that decision about not getting off my butt.

So far, 37 seconds of brainstorming yields the following list, in no particular order:

• Conservation and Research for Endangered Species
• Heiger International
• Minnesota Public Radio
• The Audubon Society
• The International Campaign for Tibet

What else?

A musician I know wrote this some time ago:

on being a musician

redmed went to a funeral and I went to a beer festival. How shallow is that?

What a racket. Tickets were $30, the exhibitors paid to be there, and the exhibitors brought the beer. Pure profit. I’ve got to learn to think like that.

It was basically 1,500 people who paid $30 for an all-you-can-drink evening. I left pretty early. After I complimented the guys from Dogfish head and scored some of their World Wide Stout as a reward.

What I learned today: If there’s no line at one of the bathrooms, and long lines at all the rest, that means that there’s something terribly terribly wrong with the one with no line. Wait in line. That’s what I learned today.

The most recent National Geographic had four of the most amazing pictures I’ve ever seen of a big cat attack:

http://cdwan.org:8080/tiger/tiger.html

The tiger and her cubs had been killing livestock, so they were going to move them away from the village. They found and moved the cubs, but didn’t locate mom. This was from the expedition to find her. She took a chunk out of the lead guy on the elephant and then ran off. At publication time, she was still at large.

Pure rage, man. Rage. She knows they took her kids.